The church of Holy Rood, serving a large village N of Alton in E Hampshire, is a spacious structure with flint and rubble facings and, mainly, red tile roofs. It comprises a W Tower, nave, N aisle and chancel, with an organ chamber and vestry to the north of the chancel.

Later works ensured that few decorative features of the 12thc and 13thc church remained. A small fragment carved with scallops is reset in a squint between the N aisle and chancel, and two fragments of dogtooth are reset within a blocked doorway in the S wall of the nave. The authenticity of the font is questionable.

In 1086 Holybourne (Haliborne) was held by the king. The name refers to a stream which runs through the village. The church was a chapelry of Alton, and as such was included in William the Conqueror’s grant of Alton to Hyde Abbey, Winchester. After the Dissolution it was granted to Winchester Cathedral.

Extensive rebuilding and restoration was carried out in 1879 by J. H. and E. Dyer of Alton to designs by Ewan Christian. A new N aisle and vestry were built in Selbourne stone, using the ‘crazy paving’ approach popular in the region through the mid-Victorian period. The chancel arch was rebuilt and the roof replaced. The nave roof was largely renewed.

Bullen et al. suggest that the fragment carved with scallops was a capital from the first chancel arch, but its small scale argues against that. Despite the suggestion of a curve in the necking, it may have come from a frieze, like comparable fragments at St Lawrence, Alton.

In 1903 the VCH reported that the font was ‘modern’. Bullen et al. assign it to the 13thc, and describe it as ‘evidently renewed’. According to a newspaper report at the time of Christian’s restoration ‘The font is restored to its original shape from small portions found in the old church’ (Hampshire Post, 29 August 1879, 7).

Certainly, the font does not seem sufficiently pristine to date in its entirety from 1879. The slab carved with the angle capitals may date from c.1200 while the basin, supports and bases were renewed in 1879.